Trump Stuns U.S. Allies with Terrifying Comments About NATO

Within 24 hours of officially claiming the title of Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump triggered panic Thursday among foreign policy experts and throughout Europe when he suggested that he might not honor the military alliance underpinning the 67-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, telling reporters that he would only come to the aid of NATO members if they fulfilled their monetary “obligations” to the United States.

In an interview with The New York Times published Wednesday, Trump hammered home the “America First,” isolationist message that has become a cornerstone of his campaign. The New York billionaire argued that the 27 other members of NATO, a Cold War-era alliance of North American and European countries, would have to start pulling their weight, and that he would only intervene on their behalf if he deemed their contributions worthy.

“You can't forget the bills," Trump said, breaking with decades of bipartisan agreement over America’s duty to support the alliance. “They have an obligation to make payments. Many NATO nations are not making payments, are not making what they're supposed to make. That’s a big thing. You can't say forget that.”

Trump’s comments provoked a swift backlash in the U.S. and abroad. “Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the head of the organization, told BuzzFeed News. “Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States.”

Many experts argue that Trump's proclamation that he wouldn't necessarily defend certain countries within the alliance would essentially render NATO’s founding charter meaningless. “The suggestion that Trump may consider abandoning a guarantee of protection to fellow NATO countries would in some ways indeed make NATO obsolete," Sarah Lain, a Royal United Services Institute fellow, told NBC News in an email. Jake Sullivan, a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton, also issued a statement condemning Trump’s remarks. "Ronald Reagan would be ashamed. Harry Truman would be ashamed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who help build NATO into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our Commander-in-Chief," he wrote.

In addition to reiterating his “America First” position, the Times reports Trump continually expressed his foreign policy approach in economic terms, rather than as any kind of moral obligation. “We are going to take care of this country first, before we worry about everyone else in the world,” he told the outlet.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, which is one of the newer states to join NATO, was quick to respond to Trump's accusations. "We are equally committed to all our NATO allies, regardless of who they may be,” he wrote on Twitter. “That's what makes them allies.” He also argued that Estonia is one of five European NATO countries that met the two percent defense expenditures commitment and "fought with no caveats" in Afghanistan when the U.S. invoked Article 5 of the treaty, which levels that an attack on one of the 28 member countries is an attack on all of them.

Trump’s hypothetical response to Russian aggression was particularly telling as to how the former reality-TV star would behave on a global stage. When asked how he would deal with a Russian attack on the Baltic nations, Trump said U.S. aid would be dependent upon if those countries “fulfilled their obligations to us.” Trump, whose campaign adviser, Paul Manafort, has close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and recently worked closely with pro-Russian forces in the Ukraine, has taken a decidedly less interventionist stance compared to most of his fellow Republicans, and has even praised Putin for his leadership.

Days earlier, Trump staffers also reportedly worked to weaken what was originally an anti-Russia amendment outlining the G.O.P.’s official position on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The Washington Postreports that the Trump team stripped out a pledge to provide Ukraine with “lethal defensive weapons,” which was replaced with a call for “appropriate assistance.” Rachel Hoff,_ a platform committee member who was present during the negotiations, told the Post, “This is another example of Trump being out of step with G.O.P. leadership and the mainstream in a way that shows he would be dangerous for America and the world.”